David Artell said some of his Crewe Alex players 'accepted' the 2-0 defeat at Northampton on Saturday.

The manager, who stayed locked inside the dressing room for more than 30 minutes after the game, did not name individuals but pointed the finger at some of his men.

He said: "There was players today that you could see who didn’t want to lose.

"There were players today that were accepting they were losing and there was players who were not accepting they were losing, but weren’t playing very well, but were at least trying to do the right things.

"We’ve all had them games and we accept that.

"But when people just accept it’s not our day - we could have made a couple of subs towards the end - you can’t do that and we’ve got to make sure that the players understand that.

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"We’ve just had a chat, not ranting and raving but telling them straight.

"If you want to achieve anything in life, whether it’s in football or outside of football, you’ve got to work hard for it. You can’t just accept whatever gets put in front of you and that’s the bottom line.

"There are some on the bench who feel they should be playing and they have a point.

"It was a really disappointing day for us because we had done well away from home in our last two away games but we went back to what we were before and we need to improve."

Artell also reserved some criticism for the referee, who missed what appeared a clear foul on Oliver Finney in the build up to the first goal. And what looked an elbow by Kevin Van Veen on Perry Ng in the final minute.